Wondering on Wednesday (v128)

Wondering, wondering, wondering.

Guns don't kill people. Backpacks kill people. Now, no one has actually said that seriously, as far as I know, but this week students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were handed clear plastic backpacks, to replace any they might have had previously that were not see-through.

I wonder, does anyone see the irony here? We inject transparency into book bags, put fences around schools, and require students to wear IDs, but we can't find a way to inject more clarity into the background check process, or even insure that everyone undergo one before purchasing a gun?  We make kids carry their belongings for all to see, but we look to enforce one state's concealed carry rules on every state in the nation, including those who are not interested?

Poor Ethan has been released from jail, after serving a couple of years for probation violation. Poor Ethan is Ethan Couch. You remember him, right? The teenager who killed four people while driving drunk, but was pronounced by a mental health professional to be suffering from a severe case of affluenza, and avoided jail time as a result? Affluenza only infects the wealthy, who because of their upbringing never learn right from wrong, and don't understand consequences and stuff like that.  I wonder, is he still suffering from his affliction, or did his time in jail (for violating his probation) provide a cure?

Here's a question for you: What do you call the White House? Seriously. what do you call the White House?  Do you call it, I don't know, the White House?  I wonder why the president couldn't pull that out of his hat when talking to kids and their parents at the White House Easter Egg Roll about, well, about the economy, and the military, and how they keep the building (or whatever) in tippy-top shape?

And finally, sticking with the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs, neither of these have much of anything to do with religion, or the 'reason for the season,' as they say, but we 'celebrate' them none-the-less, and have been celebrating them since the 1800s at the tippy-top shape place.

One thing that was not celebrated, I learned, was Easter in a Google doodle. And apparently, the doodlers haven't doodled for Easter since 2000, when they used two candy eggs for the OO in Google.

How did I learn this, you might wonder?  From Fox News. As you regular readers know, I try to learn about different sides of issues, no matter how painfully Red or painfully Blue the slant, because it's my job as a citizen to understand what the heck's going on and what is important other than what I think is important, or people like me think is important.

And for Fox News, and many similarly-thinking folks, this is a big darn deal.  Mind you, candy eggs in the doodle have nothing to do with the resurrection, and have nothing to do with religion - but they sure as heck count on the plus side of the ledger when you're fighting the war against Christianity, which is what Fox et al believe they're doing.

Google told Fox

We don't have Doodles for religious holidays, in line with our current Doodle guidelines. Doodles may appear for some non-religious celebrations that have grown out of religious holidays, such as Valentine's Day, Holi's Festival of Colors, Tu B'Av and the December holiday period, but we don't include religious imagery or symbolism as part of these. 

And Fox told me

Among the holidays the tech giant regularly celebrates with Google Doodles other than Easter Sunday are Earth Day, Martin Luther King Day, Lunar New Year, Halloween, St. Patrick's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas...

I wonder how I missed all of these 'holidays' before...particularly Earth Day, coming from the Trump News Network - irony dripping on the floor with that one, right)

And, I wonder, why it would have been better to celebrate by showing fake candy as fake eggs, given the importance of the holiday to believers? Is that really better than nothing?

And, I wonder, dare I tell Fox News that I once got a Google Doodle for my birthday?